Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
From: dennis.l.erlich@support.com
Subject: WHAT RIGHTS?
Message-ID: <9509161722.0OESJ02@support.com>
References: <hornofDEzw5u.AIs@netcom.com>
Organization: L.A. Valley College Public BBS (818)985-7150
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Distribution: world
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 95 17:22:35 -0700
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lenngray@netcom.netcom.com (Lenny Gray)

Me:
>:     I am a songwriter.  I understand what it is to own an
>:     intangible like a song.  I have no problems protecting the
>:     exploitation of intellectual property.  But as one of my song
>:     writing teachers once said.  "There's no point going into action
>:     when someone cops one of your songs.  Wait til they make some
>:     actual money from it ... *THEN* SUE THE HELL OUT OF THEM.
   
Lenny:
>Even then, there are problems with the idea of copyrights as "ownership",
>_especially_ in the music arena.
>
>I've been considering writing on why the concept of copyrights probably
>needs to be utterly abandoned, based on something I heard on a "human-
>interest" news story on TV about two months ago.  It seems a guy wrote
>an "AI" program that analyzed past musical hits, and used the results to
>synthesize 11,000 melodies, all of which he then copyrighted, en masse.
>Taking that as a lead, suppose I go one step further, and write one that
>enumerates basically _all_ non-cacaphony combinations (say less than
>10,000,000) as 32 bar melodies (and I _do_ have the wherewithall to
>actually do that).
>
>Would that mean that I'd then "own" _all_ future new music that the guy
>in the news story hadn't already registered?
>
>- Lenny -
   
    This is quite an argument and certainly within the realm of 
    possibility.  Shows inhrent flaw in our concept of 
    intellectual property.
    
            +--------------------------------------+
           Rev. Dennis L Erlich  * * the inFormer * *
      dennis.l.erlich@support.com  +  inForm@primenet.com
                           "tar baby"